Roy Davies

Photograph of myself with a mist-shrouded Machu Picchu in the background. Taken after walking
the Inca Trail, August 1997. I helped to write the book Explore the Inca
Trail, with Jacquetta Megarry. The second edition is out, as is a new
edition of the thriller Into the Fire which includes chapters set in
Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail!

Who am I?

In June 2007 I took early retirement from the University of Exeter (but
am retaining some connections with the university).

From September 2002 until then I was the librarian of the St. Luke's
Campus, University of Exeter.
I was also an honorary fellow of the Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry,
now the University of Exeter Medical School. Previously I
was the science and engineering librarian at the University of Exeter and
was also responsible for coordination of access to electronic journals in
all subjects. Here is a list of my publications. This is my
e-mail address.

Academic and Literary Interests

Information retrieval has always been a particular interest. It is not
only the technical aspect, which is being transformed by the use of
computers, that I find interesting but also the wider impact of information
on society. My list of publications includes articles on expert systems in
cataloguing and in reference work, and techniques for discovering
previously unnoticed logical connections in scientific literature.

In the early 1990s there was an explosion of commercial interest in the
Web and in particular there was increasing amount of attention being paid
to e-money and electronic commerce. In the inaugural issue of the British
edition of Wired I wrote an article on the possible dangers of the
commercialisation of the Internet, (though I am certainly not
against commerce on the Net) and a fuller version of the article Should Information
be Free? is available. I have compiled a Web page on the subject of
e-money and
another on all forms of money: past,
present and future. My interest in the history of
money comes from the research in this field by my father, Glyn Davies
who was an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Wales and
wrote a 700 page book on this subject, now in its third edition.

One of my brothers, the late John Davies (1952-2011),
was a professor of economics at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada,
and my other brother, Kenneth, is a geophysicist working for BP while my
sister Linda
Davies is a former merchant banker,turned writer, and author of the
novels, Nest of Vipers
and Wilderness of
Mirrors, Into the Fire,
Something
Wild and Final Settlement. The
first four in particular are set in the world of high finance. When Barings
Bank collapsed the Canadian magazine Macleans wrote:

"Linda Davies
has proven a point made years ago by Marshall McLuhan, who said that
artists can warn us of future disasters. Three years ago, Davies wrote the
novel Nest of Vipers about a computer whiz-kid who decides to exploit the
system and make tons of money while being employed as a mole by the Bank of
England. She wrote what 28-year-old Nick Leeson accomplished in Singapore
last week."

I have also produced a set of web pages on the Financial Fiction Genre describing ficiton in which
banking and finance plays a significant role, from the times of authors
such as Dumas, Dickens and Zola to the present. See also my page on
financial
scandals for information about shady dealings in fact as well as
fiction.

My eldest niece, Eleanor
Beaton, who works in Nova Scotia in Canada, is also a writer and has
set up a firm that provides a complete range of communications services for
clients from the business, non-profit and government sectors.

Other Interests

I like travelling extensively, especially to places with spectacular
scenery, and walking. As mentioned earlier, I have hiked the Inca Trail, twice in fact, and some chapters of my sister's
third thriller, Into the Fire
are set in that part of Peru. I have also climbed Kilimanjaro. Walking is a
pastime which I frequently indulge in on my doorstep since Dartmoor, Exmoor
and the coasts of north and south Devon are all nearby. As my father was
Welsh and my mother is Danish, I am interested in most things to do with
Wales and with Denmark and Scandinavia in general. I speak both Welsh and
Danish reasonably well. My sister's first novel Nest of Vipers
has been translated into Danish as Slangereden, published by
Lindhardt og Ringhoff, and naturally I read that as well as the original
version!